Tribeca Property

Tonight officially kicks off the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival with the feature premiere of Baby Mama, the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler comedy.  Since film is not my expertise, rather than provide summaries or suggestions on films to go see, I’m going to focus on the numbers behind the festival, including what it means to Tribeca and downtown Manhattan in terms of economic impact.  Here we go:

Feature Length Film Premieres:

World Premieres: 53
International: 6
North American: 30
U.S. Premieres: 7
New York Premieres: 19

Final Number of Screenings: 920

Estimated Attendance: Over 500,000

Estimated Economic Impact: Over $110M

So although restaurants will be a bit crowded around town, in the end it’s all good.  See you at the movies.

Tribeca Film Festival [Official Site]

The Sanitation Department reported Monday the neighborhood with the highest amount of trash that was recycled this past fiscal year ending June 2007.  And the winner is…. Tribeca!  Tribeca recycled 27.9% of their trash beating out close contenders Park Slope and parts of Carroll Gardens (27.1%).

The lowest was the Mott Haven section of the Bronx at 4.9%.

Recycling’s very much in vogue in Tribeca

Although almost entirely surrounded by construction at the corners of Chambers and West Broadway, Reade and West Broadway and Hudson Street entirely from Chambers to Reade, the James Bogardus viewing garden is a beacon of calm amongst a circle of chaos.  The flowers are in full bloom and the garden seems to have been meticulously groomed.  Truly a grand site/sight on a beautiful spring day. 

P.S.  Note the bird in the birdbath showering!

As more premium buildings are introduced into the rental supply, rental prices continue to rise.  Overall the Manhattan apartment rents climbed 5.5 percent in 2007.  Tribeca is no different as new high rises such as 200 Chambers introduced additional units into the rental market. 

A Tribeca studio rents for an average of $2,790 for approximately 575 square feet.  One bedrooms currently on the market are averaging $5,400 with a median of $4,500 for approximately 1200 square feet.  Two bedrooms  were transacting between $7,000 and $7,500 for approximately 1600 square feet.  Lastly, three bedrooms were commanding the highest premium averaging the highest price per square foot at $69 resulting in average asking rents of $12,900 for approximately 2500 square feet.

Average rental prices are expected to rise further as new developments such as 101 Warren start to close and enter the rental inventory.  New properties with doorman charge an average of 34% more for rent than older buildings with doorman. 

 Manhattan has been quite resilient when it comes to the residential housing market, so to keep things interesting, I decided to take the south Florida foreclosure heat map and place alongside the downtown Manhattan foreclosure heat map.  As you may have guessed, red is not the color you want to see!  Tribeca (and most of downtown Manhattan) has been so far virtually immune from foreclosures.

 The low level of foreclosures in the Tribeca and downtown market has much to do with the low levels of speculation that went on in the real estate market here, as opposed to places like south Florida.  In addition, most developers prevented purchasers from reselling their units prior to closing.  This was not true in the earlier days of the south Florida market, causing hugh run ups in prices.

Foreclosures Shown On Scary, Encroaching Heat Maps
HotPads - New York City

The numbers are in for the 1st Quarter and it’s clear that the Manhattan market is off the heated pace of last year.  The venerable Jonathan Miller released his report today and indicated that sales were off 34% compared to the prior year quarter.  Several of the other brokerages claimed that sales were off only slightly, but Jonathan’s numbers are in line with my numbers for the Tribeca market (sales down about 31%) and appear more accurate.

 Average Sales Price

Average Sales Price increased to a record $1.722m, up 33.5%.  Much of the increase was due to the closing of two high end condominiums in the 1st quarter, namely 15 Central Park West and the Plaza.  Excluding these developments, the average sales price was still up almost 20%.  Since new developments tend to skew the actual reality of the current market due to the lag between when the purchase is made and when the property is actually closed on, the coop average sales were of interest since 99% of all new developments are condos.  Looking at the coop market, the average sales price was $1.39m or up 23% from the prior year quarter.  That’s quite significant.  Average price per square foot was also up almost 16% to $1,128.

Supply

Supply in the 1st quarter of 2008 was up about 5% compared to the prior year quarter.  The increase was almost entirely due to condos, since coop supply actually dropped 2% compared to last year’s numbers.  Since the sales pace is materially off from last year, the supply number is expected to rise as we move further into 2008.

Days on Market and Negotiability

Days on Market increased 11% to 146 days compared to the prior year quarter and the average discount off list also increased 3.2% from 2.6% in the prior year quarter.  [Read more →]

After coming off an active February, Tribeca contract signed activity slowed in March to 30 contracts signed, off of last year’s March total of 45.  Almost 70% of all Tribeca contracts signed were in the $3 million dollar or less category.  The most active price range was the $2 million to $2.99 million range, accounting for 35% of all contract signed activity.  Pricing held quite nicely averaging about $1360 per square foot with a median of about $1290 after adjustment for discounting.

 Total Supply

Supply inched upwards to approximately 257 active listings up from 236 at the beginning of February.  54 new listings came onto the market after adjusting for closed and contract signed activity.  This is typical for the spring and expected.  Of the current active listings, a little more than half were priced at $3 million or less.  The average square footage price for all active Tribeca listings was $1533.  The median was $1439.

Analysis

Although the pace of sales is quite off from last year this time, pricing is still holding.  The market is becoming more normalized.  Buyers are becoming more discriminating and taking their time.  The increase in supply will help since selection has been limited.  Sellers who are pricing correctly are seeing action rather quickly.  New development is also still in demand and selling at a steady pace.  We will continue to monitor absorption rates as we move through 2008.

In the last post we looked at the contract signed activity that has occurred so far in 2008.  Now let’s dig a bit deeper into the numbers to see exactly what type of properties are selling.  The two categories that seem to be the natural dividers in the Tribeca market are new development units versus resale units. 

Let’s define exactly what these terms will mean.  New development will be considered any new project that has been introduced or closed within the last two years.  For example, the current resales of units at 200 Chambers would still fall under new development.  Resales would reflect everything else.

Looking at the Tribeca data for 2008, we see that activities from new development signings reflected approximately 65% of all sales in January and 75% of all sales in February.  Quite a significant percentage.  Or is it?  To determine whether the number is relevant we need to look at how the current supply stacks up.  Of all the availale units for sale, approximately 55% were new development units compared to 45% for resales.  So new development is clearly taking more than its share of sales in comparison to resales.  But why?

The reason new development seems to have taken an early lead in 2008 seems to be a result of the current environment.  Firstly, many of the resale units require some form of renovation.  When the markets [Read more →]

With so much concern for what’s happening in 2008 in Tribeca real estate, I decided to drill down on the numbers a bit deeper.  Due to the number of high end closings at the Plaza and 15 Central Park West, the 1st quarter Manhattan real estate market results will inevitable be skewed upwards.  To counter this effect, I decided to focus on contracts signed in 2008.  By focusing on contracts signed, we remove the new developments and other properties that buyers entered into either last year or even earlier that are closing in 2008.  [Read more →]